Professor
Stith Thompson argued that the tale is "essentially East European", "at home in Russia", but could also be found in the Near East, in Baltic and Scandinavian countries. According to Japanese scholar
Seki Keigo, the tale type is "common in
eastern Europe, India, and China".
Literary predecessors The oldest attestation of the tale type is found in ancient East Asian literature of the 7th century, namely
Chinese and
Japanese. Seki Keigo pinned down its appearance in some literary collections of his country, such as in
Nihongi, the
Ryoi-ki and the ''''. Scholar David Blamires argues for the existence of the tale type in the medieval work
Gesta Romanorum. In the tale, an emperor is desirous to possess not the knight's wife, but the knight's
lands, and orders him to bring a black horse, a black falcon, a black dog and a black horn. The knight's wife guides her husband through the impossible quest.
Europe Professor Jack V. Haney stated that subtypes 465A and 465C appear as the "typical combination" in
East Slavic,
Baltic and
Turkic, but type 465C only appears in Northeastern Europe and in Turkic traditions. In a "Cossack" (
Ukrainian) tale,
The Story of Ivan and the Daughter of the Sun, the peasant Ivan obtains a wife in the form of a dove maiden whose robe he stole when she was bathing. Some time later, a nobleman lusts after Ivan's dove maiden wife and plans to get rid of the peasant. In an
Armenian variant,
The Maiden of the Sea (translated to French and republished as
La fille de la mer), a poor widow, on her deathbed, instructs her only son to throw a loaf of bread into the sea, just as she did in life. One day, the youth arrives home and sees the place all clean and tidy. Suspecting something is amiss, the boy stays in waiting and sees a fish coming out of the sea and taking their fishskin off, revealing itself to be a beautiful maiden. The youth seizes her and she screams for help, to which a voice claims from the sea that the human is its son-in-law. The fish maiden and the youth marry and, one day, the Prince, passing by their cottage, sights the maiden and becomes enamored with her. He then orders her husband to meet his outlandish demands. Baltic variants of the tale type (formerly AaTh 465A), like
Žaibas ir Perkūnas tabokinėje, attest the presence of Baltic thunder god
Perkūnas. In one Estonian variant, the human husband acquires a maiden from above as his wife, and in another the mother-in-law is the ruler of the Sun.
Russia In a tale by Bernard Isaacs,
Go I Know Not Where, Fetch I Know Not What, the hunter shoots a
turtledove, which transforms into a maiden called Tsarevna Marya. When the hunter goes on the quest for the "something" the Tsar wants, he meets Baba Yaga, who the narrative describes as the
mother of his wife. In a tale translated by
Jeremiah Curtin,
Go to the Verge of Destruction and Bring Back Shmat-Razum, one of the king's sharpshooters, named Fedot, spares a blue dove and she becomes a "soul-maiden", a lovely tsar's daughter. When her husband is tasked with bringing back "Shmat-Razum", he meets three princesses and their aged mother - her wife's family. The tale was also translated by Nisbet Bain with the title
Go I Know Not Whither—Fetch I Know Not What. In a tale published by journalist
Post Wheeler,
Schmat-Razum, the bowman Taraban, while on a hunt, sees seven white ducks with silver wings beneath a tree. When they alight near the "sea-ocean", the seven birds take off their silver wings and become maidens. Taraban hides the silver wings of one of them. The other six white ducks depart, but one stays behind. The maiden asks the stranger to give her wings back and, if they are a youth, she will marry him. They marry, but Taraban shows up at court to explain to the Tzar he married without his permission. Taraban presents his wife to the Tzar and his court, and they decide to send the bowman to look for "Schmat-Razum", to try to get rid of him. In a tale translated by Charles Downing as
I know-not-what of I-know-not-where, the archer is called Petrushka. While on a hunt, he finds an injured dove and brings it home. The dove becomes a human girl named Masha, the Dove Maiden. After a while the emperor becomes enamored with Masha, and sends her husband on an errand to find "I-Know-Not-What" in a place called "I-Know-Not-Where". The archer completes the task with the help of Baba Yaga and a magical frog named Babushka-Lyagushka-Skakushka ("Grandmother Hopping Frog"). In a tale collected in the
White Sea region from Russian storyteller with the title "Ондрей-стрелец" ("Ondrey, the Archer"), Ondrey is a member of the royal archers, and one day decides to go alone on a hunt. He shoots a female falcon (Russian: соколица, "sokolitsa") with an arrow and goes to kill it, but the falcon, with human voice, pleads for its life and asks to be taken to his home. He does and the falcon becomes a human maiden. They live as man and wife for some time. Months into their domestic arrangement, the falcon maiden wants to help her human husband improve is material wealth, so she weaves for him a carpet, and tells him to sell by the nighest price. The prince's servant buys it a hangs on a castle wall. The prince admires the handwork and asks about its origins. The servant says Ondrey's wife did it. They go to Ondrey's hut and his wife opens the door. They admire her great beauty, and, after returning to the palace, plot to kill Ondrey and take the maiden. Thus, the prince, advised by a witch, sends Ondrey on dangerous errands: first, to get a golden sheep's head from
Buyan; then a golden pig hair; lastly, to go "don't know where", fetch "don't know what". The falcon maiden, named Elena the Beautiful, summons magical help to produce the golden sheep's head and the pig hair. As for the "don't know whay", Elena gives her husband a yarn he must roll out and follow the thread where it ends. With tears in his eyes, he says goodbye to his wife and follows the ball of yarn. It stops at a castle, where his wife's family lives. With the help of his mother-in-law, a wise sorceress, he locates the "don't know what": a spirit named Svat Naum.
Kalmyk people According to Baira Goryaeva, expert on
Kalmyk folklore, tale type 465A, in the Kalmyk tale corpus, shows that the hero (of humble origins) marries a daughter of Khurmusta-
Tengri, a celestial deity. In a Kalmyk tale,
Tsarkin Khan and the Archer, an Archer steals the robe of a "golden-crowned" swan maiden when she was in human form and marries her. Later, the titular Tsarkin Khan wants to marry the Archer's swan maiden wife and plans to get rid of him by setting dangerous tasks.
Gagauz people In a tale from the
Gagauz people,
Concerning the Sun, collected by Moshkov and translated by , a tsar orders his three sons to shoot three arrows to decide their fates. The elders' arrows land near human maidens; the youngest's falls nears a tortoise. The tsar's son takes the tortoise home and goes hunting. When he returns at night, he sees the place clean and tidy and a meal prepared for him. He discovers that the tortoise changes into a beautiful human maiden and gets rid of her shell. Some time later, his father, the tsar, sees his daughter-in-law and decides to have her for himself. So he goes to his son and tasks him with getting his dead mother (the tsar's dead wife)'s ring, by going into the other world. The magical wife, now human, instructs her human husband to go to the sea and shout into a hole, her mother will appear and give him the keys to the earth. The tsar's son obeys his wife and uses the keys on the locks of the earth; the enters the earth and begins a journey. Every stop he is asked by a person about a problem, and the tsar's son promises to bring the questions to God (tale type ATU 461, "
Three Hairs from the Devil's Beard"). He reaches a shining castle, and meets the mother of the Sun, who tells him that the Sun has his mother's ring. Coxwell compared the initial episode to the Russian tale
Frog Princess and German (Grimm) tale
The Three Feathers.
Georgia According to
Georgian scholarship, tale type ATU 402, "The Frog as Bride", is "contaminated" with (former) tale type AaTh 465C, "Beautiful Wife (The Journey to the Other World)": the task the hero's rival sets him is to visit Hell (Other World) in search of something (a soul of a deceased person, an object). In a Georgian tale, ''The Frog's Skin'', three brothers try their luck in finding a bride by shooting three arrows at random locations. The third brother's arrow falls near a lake; a frog jumps out of it and he takes it home. His elder brothers find human girls as brides, whereas he has to remain with a frog, but such is his fate. One day, after he returns from work, he sees that the house has been swept and cleaned up. He decides to discover who is this mysterious housekeeper: he hides one day and sees that the frog casts off its amphibian skin to become a human maiden. The man takes skin to burn it. Despite his frog-wife's protests, he does it anyway. Some time later, news reach the ears of the lord of the country of the man's beautiful wife. Hellbent on earning her as his wife, the lord threatens the man with nearly impossible tasks or death. His wife reminds him of her warning, but gives him the means to save himself: he should go to the edge of the lake where he found her and summon for Mother and Father. The last task is to go to the Other World in search of the lord's mother and get from her a ring. In a Georgian tale translated by
Caucasologist with the title
Die Tochter der Sonne ("The Daughter of the Sun"), three friends work together in the fields. One of them loses his harvest and leaves to look for work elsewhere. He works for a rich man and promises to collect all the hay in one day. He almost fulfills his promise, until he sees the Sun and begs it not to set until he has finished the last one. The sun sets and night comes; the man loses his work and goes to another employer, where he works as a shepherd. A wolf comes and takes a sheep to the woods. The man follows the wolf and rests a bit near a river. He then sees three Sun maidens descending from the sky to bathe in a lake. The man takes one of the Sun maidens to his poor hut and marries her. The Sun maiden gives him a magical ring. Some time later, the poor man wants to invite the monarch to see his humble house, but his wife warns against it. He invites the king, who sends his nazirs and viziers in his stead. The nazirs and viziers go the man's hut and see the Sun maiden. They report back to the king that a beautiful maiden is married to a poor man, when she is fit to be a king's wife. The king then sends the poor man to get the golden ram of the Sun. The man goes to his father-in-law and gets the ram. Next, the king orders the man to go to the Afterlife to retrieve the king's mother's ring. His wife gives him an apple and tells him to follow it wherever it rolls. The man follows the apple and finds a deer with giant antlers, an emaciated bull and a priest carrying a church on his back who ask him the answers for their problems. He also meets a strange couple, a woman building a tower with eggs, a baker who burns bread in an oven, and they explain they are being punished for misdeeds in their lives.
Greece According to Marilena Papachristophorou, Greek scholar supposed that the Greek oikotype (the animal wife as a turtle and the human husband as a fisherman) originated from an Oriental source.
Armenia In a 1991 article, researcher noted a similar combination between tale types 402, "The Frog Bride", and 465, "The Man persecuted because of his Beautiful Wife", in
Armenia. She also argued that this combination was "stable" and "part of the Armenian tale corpus", with at least 8 variants recorded.
Asia Turkey A similar story is attested in the
Typen türkischer Volksmärchen ("Turkish Folktale Catalogue"), devised by scholars
Wolfram Eberhard and
Pertev Naili Boratav. According to their system, abbreviated as TTV, EbBo or EB, in type TTV 86,
Das Frosch-Mädchen ("The Frog-Maiden"), three princes try their luck in finding brides by throwing three arrows at random, the youngest prince's falls near a frog whom he marries; the frog bride's skin is burnt by the prince, and she remains human; due to this, the king, her father-in-law, begins to lust after her, and devises ways to kill his own son, by sending him on a quest for impossible things. According to Eberhard and Wolfram's system, the supernatural bride appears as a frog in most of the catalogued variants, followed by a turtle, and a rat or a dog in others. In other variants, the fairy maiden (a
peri) comes out of a piece of wood the male character (named Mehmet Efendi) takes home. In a Turkish tale published by
Ignác Kúnos with the title
The Fish-Peri, a young, poor fisherman catches a fish so beautiful it saddens him to sell it or cook it, so he decides to keep it in a well. The next day, after he returns from his fishing trip at night, he sees the place neat and tidy, and wonders who could have done it. He spies on the person responsible for it, and sees that the fish has become a beautiful maiden. The youth takes the fish skin and throws it in the fire. The fish maiden consents to become his wife. However, news of her beauty reach the ears of the Padishah, who begins to lust after the maiden, and sets the fisherman on three difficult quests: to build a palace of gold and diamond in the middle of the sea in 40 days; to prepare a feast so grand everyone would eat and there would still be much food left; to have a mule hatch out of an egg, and to find a year-old infant who could talk and walk.
Middle East In the
Arabian Nights collection, the tale of
Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri Banu is also classified as belonging to the tale type. Preceded by tale type ATU 653A, "The Rarest Thing in the World", the story continues as Prince Ahmad marries the
Peri Banou, the daughter of the king of the
jinni. The prince, after a while, visits his father, who becomes enamoured by his daughter-in-law.
Central Asia In a
Tuvan tale,
Ösküs-ool and the Daughter of Kurbustu-Khan, poor orphan boy Ösküs-ool seeks employment with powerful khans. He is tasked with harvesting their fields before the sun sets, of before the moon sets. Nearly finishing both chores, the boy pleads to the moon and the sun to not set for a little longer, but time passes. The respective khans think he never finished the job, berate and whip him. Some time later, while living on his own, the daughter of Khurbustu-khan comes from the upper world in the form of a swan. The boy hides her clothing and she marries him, now that she is stranded on Earth. Some time later, an evil Karaty-khan demands that the youth produces a palace of glass and an invincible army of iron men for him - feats that he accomplishes thanks to his wife's advice and with help from his wife's relatives.
Korea In a
Korean tale,
The Snail Woman, a poor farmer laments his solitude, but a woman's voice asks him to live with her. The youth sees no one but a tiny snail that he brings home. During the day, he toils in the rice fields, while the snail becomes a woman, does the chores and returns to the shell. The youth returns at night and amazes at the cleanliness of the place. He decides to discover who is responsible. On the third day, he sees that the snail becomes a human woman. He stops her before she returns to the shell. The snail woman reveals she is the daughter of the Dragon King, enchanted to be a mollusk. The enchantment is over and they live as husband and wife. A wealthy magistrate sees the woman and becomes enamoured. He decides to force the farmer to perform difficult tasks. The Dragon King's daughter says her father will help him.
Japan The tale type 465 is also registered in Japan, with the name
Tono no Nandai. Scholar Hiroko Ikeda reported 28 variants. Seki Keigo reported 39 variants, and noted its popularity in Japanese oral tradition. In his system of Japanese folktales,
Seki Keigo indexed a second type related to the story, which he titled
The Flute-player Bridegroom. In this cycle, a woman from the world above descends to earth and marries a human flute player, because she enjoys his flute playing. A local feudal lord imposes three tasks on the flute-player, otherwise he must surrender his wife to the feudal lord. After they deal with the lord's advances, the tale segues into the human's visit to his wife's home.
Khmu people Another variant, titled
The Orphan and the Sky Maidens, was collected from the
Kammu people of
Southeast Asia.
Buryat people In a
Buryat tale, "Молодец и его жена-лебедь" (
Mongolian: "Сагаан шубуугаар haмга хэhэн хубуун";
English: Molodets and his Swan-Wife), a down-on-his-luck boy tries to get a job herding horses in the steppes, lumbering for an old man and even planting crops, but no such luck. He decides to earn his living by fishing in a lake. And thus he spends his days. One day, he sees seven white birds coming down to the lake shore and decides to follow them. He sees they transforming into seven maidens. He hides and fetches the clothing of one of them, who gets left behind and the other depart. The bird-girl calls for the stranger: if a young man, she'll be his wife; if an old man, she'll be his daughter. The youth reveals himself, returns the birdskin, and they marry. One day, the bird maiden draws her portrait on a piece of paper that the wind blows away for seven days and seven nights, until the portrait lands on the lap of Abahai-khan, who falls madly in love with the maiden depicted and goes on a frantic search for her. He and his ministers discover she is the wife of the poor youth who lives near the lake. The Khan tries to send the poor youth on perilous quests to get rid of him, but, with his wife's help, he prevails and becomes the next khan.
Africa Egypt Scholar Hasan El-Shamy cited that the tale
Histoire du pêcheur et de son fils ("The Story of the Fisherman and his Son"), collected by Guillaume Spitta-Bey in late-19th century, showed "the undisputable typological character" of type 465. In this tale, the king falls in love with the wife of a fisherman and conspires with his vizier to send him on dangerous quests.
Sudan In a
Sudanese tale,
The fisherman and the prince, a humble fisherman catches a fish, brings to his hut and goes to the market. When he returns, he sees a great palace and a beautiful maiden, who reveals she was the fish, enchanted into that form. They marry. One day, the maiden bathes in the river and draws the attention of a local prince. The prince tries to create impossible riddles for the fisherman, but he answers it with his wife's help. This tale was also classified by scholar
Hasan El-Shamy under type 465. German ethnologue
Leo Frobenius collected a tale from
Kordofan with the title
Das Girdamädchen ("The Monkey Girl"): an
emir gives a spear to each of his three sons. The three sons throw their spears and kill three antelopes. The emir is satisfied and takes his sons through the village, where they are to cast their spears in front of the house with their respective brides. The elder two stick their spears in front of huts of human wives. The youngest bemoans the fact that there is not a beautiful young woman in their village and states he will try his luck in the desert. The youngest throws his spear and it hits a single tree with a Girda (a kind of monkey) on top of it. He takes the Girda home. The emir visits his human daughters-in-law to see their work and looks content with their choices. After he announces he will visit his third son, the youth complains to his wife that she is an animal, and she offers to finds him a good human spouse by directing him to a village in the desert. The youth thanks her help, but he is her husband, after all. That same night, he spies on his wife's room and notices a light shining out of it. The next day, the emir visits his son and marvels at the wonderful woven carpets and the exquisite food, and invites his three sons and their wives to his palace. The third son bemoans again his luck, but his monkey wife insists to be brought to her father-in-law's court. The third son sees that his monkey wife takes of the animal skin and he burns it. The now human wife decides to wear a veil to the banquet, and begs her husband to not let her lift her veil. Once there, she asks for some bread, and her veil is lifted. The emir admires his third daughter-in-law and decides to have her for himself and kill his son. Some time later, the emir orders his son to plant a vineyard overnight, to plant an orchard full of watermelons, to eat bread and meat that fill up a house, and to find him a child born overnight that can talk and walk. ==Cultural references==